"Anyway, that's how I lost my medical license." - The Medic, Meet The Medic

Such a simple thing, really. Just a few words. I need you to come in tomorrow. How can such a simple thing hit so hard?

He probably didn't even realize that it would be so painful for you to hear that. Or he didn't care, if he did know. You're not sure which option is the more painful to think about.

Because it is painful, as you sit there in the custodial closet in the rear of the third floor, the one nobody comes to that you occasionally use to sneak a handful of caffeine pills more. The sheer amount of uncontrollable, soul-straining anger coursing through your veins is physically painful. No one should be able to be this angry without exploding.

You certainly haven't felt this way before. You've never been so mad that you snapped a mop handle in half with your bare hands while imagining that Doctor Barker's smug face was in your grasp instead. You've never been so uncontrollably racked with heaving sobs, or so full of the desire to find someone and just hit them and hit them and hit them until they stop moving, as you are now.

You're scaring yourself, even. Something in the back of your head insists that it must be the lack of sleep throwing you this far off-balance. That and the hundreds of caffeine pills and cups of coffee you've been mainlining for the past month. That must be it.

But something else in your head, something much louder, says that you're right to be this angry at Barker and all the rest of them. Somewhere in the days of sleep-deprivation, you found a sort of clarity. It's been fleeting until now, just brief snatches of time when you felt perfectly lucid, moreso than you ever had before. And now you can feel the entire world coming into focus in your head.

You shut your eyes for a moment.

When you open them again, there's a door.

It's a little door, too small to be meant for use by a full-sized man. You'd have to crawl through it. But it's there, set into the crumbling plaster in the back corner of the closet, and it definitely wasn't a moment ago.

CODE

This is a game topic for Don't Rest Your Head, which will hopefully be getting its own subforum soon. This is a thread involving GraciousVictory's character Antoinette, and no one else's. Anyone can post in here to make out of character comments, but please place all OOC banter in the [code] tags, to keep it separate from the rest of the thread.

Now, for Grace: this is your character's Awakening. The stress of the doctor's continuing neglect and your own sleep deprivation have just combined to finally push her over the edge into the world of the Nightmares. As such, your character feels that something is different, but doesn't know what yet. This scene will hopefully give her a basic introduction to the Mad City and her own new abilities.

LORD, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN? - Death, in Terry Pratchett's Reaper Man

It's quite definitely there, made out of the same grey material as the rest of the walls. It has a little brass doorknob which, upon inspection, is also quite definitely real. It turns under your hand easily, and the door swings open a second later, revealing... a restaurant of some sort?

No, a diner. The tile floors and metal barstools visible on the other side of the room make that clear, as do the booths visible at the edge of the room. But there are no lights on in there, only a sort of dim glow from a window - just barely visible from this angle - above one of the booths.

LORD, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN? - Death, in Terry Pratchett's Reaper Man

Psychotic episode? Maybe. Antoinette feels very clear-headed, but then, the thing about madness is that you never realize that it's there.

She sticks her head through the little door. It is, indeed, a diner. A fizzling, bright-red neon sign above the bar declares it to be ADAM'S RIB. It also appears to be closed. There's a light on in the kitchen, casting the area around the double-doors leading to it in a bright-yellow glow, but there are no patrons in the main area and there are no lights on anywhere else.

The angle makes it difficult to see through the windows to the outside, but the city outside appears to consist of tall, dimly-lit skyscrapers. Details are hard to make out, but Gothic architecture appears to be the order of the day.

LORD, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN? - Death, in Terry Pratchett's Reaper Man

It's a tight fit. If Antoinette was even slightly larger than she is, it might not have worked at all, but she manages it, and soon finds herself straightening up inside the diner.

Everything looks pretty much exactly as it did prior to stepping through. What's surprising, though, is what's on the other side of the window.

The city outside doesn't look... right. Gothic architecture is present, yes: great, sweeping buildings with sharp angles and foreboding outlines are everywhere, their natural menace accentuated by the darkness and the glare of the old-fashioned gas lamps. But the two-story house just next to that great Gothic cathedral wouldn't look out of place in an American suburb, and the house that's literally stacked on top of it looks as if it's just been slapped together from whatever was to hand. Mostly sheet metal.

And the people are no less eclectic. Antoinette can see quite a few people passing who wouldn't have looked out of place at the height of Victorian fashion, striding alongside American teenagers, 1920s mobsters, and what looks to be a Shinto priest in full ceremonial dress. A horse and buggy is clattering by on the cobblestone streets, only to be passed a moment later by a Thunderbird.

Her gazing, however, is interrupted by the sound of clattering from the kitchen, and footsteps approaching the double doors.

LORD, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN? - Death, in Terry Pratchett's Reaper Man

As Antoinette spins back towards the little door, she hears a small sound - the click of a lock being shut. The little door is closed again, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out where that sound came from. She won't be getting back that way.

The footsteps, fortunately, decline to barge in on her just yet. Instead, they stop just in front of the double doors. A pair of shadows is visible on the other side of the cloudy glass panes set into the doors. One is a large, muscular shape, obviously male, while the other is thin, with a sharply hooked, protruding nose.

A female voice drifts through from the other side: "I'll expect it ready by this time tomorrow, cooked to order this time, you understand? No more of that slop, or you might find that quite a bit of your patronage disappears. Mother has a lot of pull, you know."

LORD, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN? - Death, in Terry Pratchett's Reaper Man

There's the front door of the diner, of course, leading out onto those crowded streets - but then again, it might be locked, and even if they aren't, it might not be the best option. Running out there without a map... It's an option, certainly, but perhaps not the best one.

There, at the edge of vision: the restrooms. They might not be much better - nowhere to run if the people behind the door decide to come through. But it's that or the front door.

While Antoinette scrambles for an exit, however, the conversation on the other side of the door is obviously drawing to a close. "Yes, m'lady," the man is saying, in a slow, drawling voice. "Of course."

"No 'experimenting'," snaps the hook-nosed woman. "These meals are an occasion, and it is an honor extended to you by Mother that your restaurant be allowed to host them. Your establishment's reputation as one of the finest in the City buys you that - but even your impeccable reputation will not stand up long to such continued fiascos as our last brunch. Or perhaps I should go to the paper boys with one of my reviews."

"No, m'lady."

"Very good."

LORD, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN? - Death, in Terry Pratchett's Reaper Man